Roberta Guerrina

Summary

Roberta Guerrina is a British political scientist. She is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Bristol. Guerrina studies the gendered effects of public policies and the way that policies are shaped by gendered hierarchies, with a particular focus on European Union policies pertaining to defense and security. She has also written extensively about the effects that Brexit will have on women, about the politics of motherhood, and about European identity.

Roberta Guerrina
NationalityBritish
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Career edit

Since 2019[1] Guerrina has been a professor of political science at The University of Bristol,[2] where she has also been Director of the Gender Research Centre.[1] Before that, she held the Jean Monnet Chair in EU Gender Politics at the University of Surrey,[1] and was the Director for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion there.[3] Guerrina co-founded the "Gendering EU Studies" research network.[4]

In 2002, Guerrina published the book Europe: History, Ideas and Ideologies. This introductory textbook takes an interdisciplinary approach to European studies.[5] Guerrina describes the historical construction of European identity in terms of how it defines otherness and positions the notion of Europe as a whole in contrast to the rest of the world.[5] The text also treats the question of whether or not a more inclusive pan-European identity could be constructed.[5]

In 2005, Guerrina published Mothering the Union: Gender politics in the EU. Mothering the Union applies a feminist understanding of equality and the relationship between the public and the private to study policies of the European Union throughout the 1990s which relate to motherhood, including Directive 92/85/EEC.[6] This book followed previous studies that Guerrina published on the topic of maternity in the European Union, such as her 2002 article "Mothering in Europe: Feminist Critique of European Policies on Motherhood and Employment" in The European Journal of Women's Studies.

Since Brexit, Guerrina has studied the question of how Brexit will affect women. She has found evidence that the original Brexit referendum had low levels of political participation by women, partly because of a systematic exclusion of women from media narratives in advance of the referendum and also because the framing of Brexit largely excluded major implications of the referendum in areas like social policy that are systematically important to women.[7] As further evidence of this pattern, she also noted that a large number of women Members of Parliament had left politics in response to Brexit.[8] In order to correct this bias and ensure that issues which are systematically important to women were included in the deals that followed Brexit, Guerrina argued that gender would need to be a major part of the Brexit negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union.[9]

Guerrina's work on the gendered effects of policies, particularly the consequences of Brexit for women, have been cited in media outlets like The New York Times,[10][11] Cosmopolitan,[12] and France 24.[13]

Selected works edit

  • Europe: History, ideas and ideologies (2002)
  • "Mothering in Europe: Feminist Critique of European Policies on Motherhood and Employment", European Journal of Women's Studies (2002)
  • Mothering the Union: Gender politics in the EU (2010)

References edit

  1. ^ a b c "Jean Monnet Chair". University of Surrey. 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  2. ^ "Roberta Guerrina". University of Bristol. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  3. ^ "College of Europe profile". College of Europe. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  4. ^ Roberta Guerrina; Toni Haastrup; Katharine Wright (19 May 2016). "Is it really that difficult to find women to talk about the EU Referendum?". LSE blogs. London School of Economics. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  5. ^ a b c Kuus, Merje (January 2006). "Book Review Europe: History, Ideas and Ideologies". Political Geography. 25 (1): 117–119. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2005.06.011.
  6. ^ "Review Mothering the Union: Gender politics in the EU". Reference & Research Book News. 21 (2). 1 May 2006.
  7. ^ Harrison, Hannah (19 December 2018). "Did the Brexit referendum politically disengage women?". Phys.org. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  8. ^ Guerrina, Roberta (26 November 2019). "Brexit's toxic masculinities are poisoning gender politics in the General Election". LSE Blogs. London School of Economics. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  9. ^ Guerrina, Roberta (19 February 2020). "Living up to the Women, Peace and Security agenda? Gender must be a core element of Brexit negotiations". LSE Blogs. London School of Economics. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  10. ^ Gupta, Alisha Haridasani (17 January 2020). "With Brexit Looming, Experts Worry Women May Be Hit Hardest". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  11. ^ "Davos Warms to Trump's Results (if Not Him Personally)". The New York Times. 21 January 2020. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  12. ^ Turan, Cyan (31 January 2020). "Why Brexit may hit women harder than men". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  13. ^ Young, Annette (31 January 2020). "Women and Brexit: Will they be hit the hardest?". France 24. Retrieved 3 May 2020.